19 April, 2013

Unless George Washington High's Principal, George Aulenbacher, the folks at the Kanawha County School board and the folks at Believe In West Virginia are prepared to argue that Jesus would condone the kind of theft that builds a high school with tax money from both Christians and non-Christians and then uses that public high school to privately promote a certain brand of Christianity, they all need to repent.And perhaps they wouldn't think Pam Stenzel's "abstinence only" speech was such a good idea if they were familiar with the research of George Barna and others who have found that Christian teens have unprotected sex, get preggers out of wedlock and contract STDs at roughly the same rate as non-Christian teens - something all teens and former teens already knew without reading a study.Apparently, Kanawha County Schools learned nothing about violations of separation of church and state from the 2002 case in which Tyler Deveny forced Kanawha County Schools to rescind its graduation prayer policy. If you are a Kanawha County tax payer and you don't want public high schools turned into private platforms for the promotion of one brand of Christianity, send a letter to the addresses below:Kanawha County Schools200 Elizabeth StreetCharleston, WV 25311phone: 304.348.7770George Washington High School1522 Tennis Club Road Charleston, WV, 25314Phone: (304)-348-7729--Higginbotham At Large reads all comments but only PUBLISHES comments from clearly identified submitters. No anonymous or Pseudonymous comments will be published.

07 April, 2013

On April 17 Tory Morgan of Reedy is scheduled to appear before Magistrate Ronald Lewis in Spencer, WV because she is charged with over 30 counts of animal cruelty including the starvation deaths of over 20 horses. Tory Morgan will no doubt say that she couldn't afford to feed her horses or some other such excuse but the truth is, Morgan had alternatives to cruelly starving her horses to death and yet she chose to starve them to death instead of exercising one of her many options.If Ms. Morgan couldn't afford to feed her horses why didn't she give them to somebody who could? Why didn't she call her local animal rescuers and ask for help? Why didn't she call her local police? Why didn't she call neighbors?Ms. Morgan had a gun and used it to shoot some of her horses. Why not euthanize all of them? Could she not afford bullets to shot all her horses? Again, I ask, why didn't she ask for help? Reporters who have covered egregious cases of animal starvation can tell you that every time this happens there are neighbors who say - often fighting back tears - that they would have fed the animals had they known the animals were being starved. My friends and readers know my position on cruelty to animals; I support creative sentencing that reminds the community what the perp did. In a perfect world, Magistrate Lewis would sentence Ms. Morgan to, say, 10 days of starvation followed by 10 years supervised care giving to sick, injured and rescued horses. I would also be OK with giving animal abusers the death penalty but I'd rather see them be forced to do something positive and, dare I say, redemptive, for animals.If you want Magistrate Lewis to send a clear signal to the community that slowly and cruelly killing animals by starving them to death will not be tolerated, send this blog post or write your letter before April 17 to:Magistrate Ronald White201 Main StreetSpencer, WV 25276 ---Higginbotham At Large reads all submitted comments but only PUBLISHES comments from clearly identified senders. No pseudonymous or anonymous comments will be published.

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Higginbotham At Large is published by Joseph Higginbotham, an unlicensed, disintermediated writer who has written hundreds of articles and columns for dozens of magazines and newspapers. My high school writing teacher, Nancy Williams, tricked me into selling my first article in 1973. Ms. Williams didn't tell me I wasn't allowed to write professionally unless I had a degree from Iowa Writers' Workshop or some other accredited academic institution. Thank you, Ms. Williams, wherever you are.

Higginbotham At Large sees systems and applies systems thinking to posts about a range of topics.